Cold Fire

moving back and forth as she said, “Yesterday, when I crawled back into the plane for that little boy, for Norby, I just … well, I amazed myself. I didn't know I had anything like that in me. I wasn't brave, I was scared to death the whole time, but I got him out of there, and I never felt better about myself.”
    “You like the way people look at you when they know you're a hero,” he said flatly.
    She shook her head. “No, that's not it. Aside from one rescue worker, no one knew I'd pulled Norby out of there. I liked the way I looked at me after I'd done it, that's all.”
    “So you're hooked on risk, heroism, you're a courage junkie.”
    Now she wanted to smack him twice. In the face. Crack, crack. Hard enough to set his eyes spinning. It would make her feel so good.
    She restrained herself. “Okay, fine, if that's the way you want to see it, then I'm a courage junkie.”
    He did not apologize. He just stared at her.
    She said, “But that's better than inhaling a pound of cocaine up my nose every day, don't you think?”
    He did not respond.
    Getting desperate but trying not to show it, Holly said, “When it was all over yesterday, after I handed Norby to that rescue worker, you know what I felt? More than anything else? Not elation at saving him—that too, but not mainly that. And not pride or the thrill of defeating death myself. Mostly I felt rage. It surprised me, even scared me. I was so furious that a little boy almost died, that his uncle had died beside him, that he'd been trapped under those seats with corpses, that all of his innocence had been blown away and that he couldn't ever again just enjoy life the way a kid ought to be able to. I wanted to punch somebody, wanted to make somebody apologize to him for what he'd been through. But fate isn't a sleazeball in a cheap suit, you can't put the arm on fate and make it say it's sorry, all you can do is stew in your anger.”
    Her voice was not rising, but it was increasingly intense. She paced faster, more agitatedly. She was getting passionate instead of angry, which was even more certain to reveal the degree of her desperation. But she couldn't stop herself:
    “Just stew in anger. Unless you're Jim Ironheart. You can do something about it, make a difference in a way nobody ever made a difference before. And now that I know about you, I can't just get on with my life, can't just shrug my shoulders and walk away, because you've given me a chance to find a strength in myself I didn't know I had, you've given me hope when I didn't even realize I was longing for it, you've shown me a way to satisfy a need that, until yesterday, I didn't even know I had, a need to fight back, to spit in Death's face. Damn it, you can't just close the door now and leave me standing out in the cold!”
    He stared at her.
    Congratulations, Thorne, she told herself scornfully. You were a monument to composure and restraint, a towering example of self-control.
    He just stared at her.
    She had met his cool demeanor with heat, had answered his highly effective silences with an ever greater cascade of words. One chance, that was all she'd had, and she'd blown it.
    Miserable, suddenly drained of energy instead of overflowing with it, she sat down again. She propped her elbows on the table and put her face in her hands, not sure if she was going to cry or scream. She didn't do either. She just sighed wearily.
    “Want a beer?” he asked.
    “God, yes.”
     

----
     
    Like a brush of flame, the westering sun slanted through the tilted plantation shutters on the breakfast-nook window, slathering bands of copper-gold fire on the ceiling. Holly slumped in her chair, and Jim leaned forward in his. She stared at him while he stared at his half-finished bottle of Corona.
    “Like I told you on the plane, I'm not a psychic,” he insisted. “I can't foresee things just because I want to. I don't have visions. It's a higher power working throughme.”
    “You want to define that a little?”
    He shrugged. “God.”
    “God's talking to you?”
    “Not talking. I don't hear voices, His or anybody else's. Now and then I'm compelled to be in a certain place at a certain time …”
    As best he could, he tried to explain how he had ended up at the McAlbury School in Portland and at the sites of the other miraculous rescues he had performed. He also told her about Father Geary finding him on the floor of the church, by the sanctuary railing, with the stigmata of, Christ marking his